Singapore’s National Parks Board (NParks) has launched the 100k Corals Initiative which aims to plant 100,000 corals in Singapore’s waters over the next 10 years and beyond.
Corals will be cultivated at a new coral culture facility at NParks’ Marine Park Outreach and Education Centre on St John’s Island before being transplanted into the marine environment to restore degraded reefs or establish new coral communities.
This will be the most extensive coral restoration effort in Singapore to date.
NParks is working with the St John’s Island National Marine Laboratory (SJINML) to roll out the 100k Corals Initiative, which has received over S$2 million in support to date through the Garden City Fund, NParks’ registered charity, from donors:
• Delta Electronics (approximately S$1.7 million)
• GSK-EDB Trust Fund (S$1 million)
• Deutsche Bank (S$100,000)
• Takashimaya Singapore
• KPI OceanConnect.
The coral species cultivated include several that are under NParks’ Species Recovery Programme, including staghorn coral (Acropora digitifera) and plate ccropora coral (Acropora millepora).
Serving as an ex-situ coral nursery, the coral culture facility will house six tanks that can rear up to 600 coral nubbins each. The nubbins, which are small coral fragments produced from adult colonies, will be attached to a specially designed frame that maximises the number of corals that can be grown in the tanks, and grown under controlled conditions.
Once the nubbins have grown large enough, they will be transplanted onto degraded reefs for restoration purposes, or inserted into other areas to establish new coral communities.
Corals-of-opportunity, which are naturally fragmented corals lying free on the floor that may not survive without external intervention, could potentially be used as a source of transplant as well.
The coral culture facility is targeted to be fully operational and open to the public in the second quarter of 2025.
Established to kickstart the 100k Corals Initiative, the NParks-Delta Corals Research Programme is a collaborative project between NParks and Delta Electronics that integrates smart technology into NParks’ coral cultivation efforts. NParks will leverage Delta’s expertise in industrial and building automation to optimise large-scale coral cultivation at the coral culture facility.
As the healthy growth of corals is dependent on several parameters, including lighting, temperature, water quality and water flow, smart technology will be deployed to cultivate corals under controlled conditions in the tanks, enabling them to thrive without being subject to environmental stressors such as ocean warming and acidification.
Corals are keystone reef-building animals that support a marine ecosystem, and an estimated one-quarter of marine species depend on coral reefs to survive. They are also a potential nature-based solution to help mitigate the impacts of climate change, serving as a natural defence against shoreline erosion while providing habitats for a rich array of marine biodiversity.